Gecko Theatre Company bring childhood memories to life in Missing

The physical theatre show is being staged at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2013

For their last visit to the Fringe, Gecko reinvented Gogol’s The Overcoat as an expansive parable about how the quest for material comfort can become a deal with the devil. Missing has an original story – a woman, Lily, feels her soul being eaten away – that writer and director Amit Lahav acknowledges as coming from a personal place.

‘All Gecko’s shows tend to be inspired by my thoughts and feelings about the world,’ he says. Drawing on his family history, Lahav plunges his heroine into a mysterious world of flashbacks. ‘She is yanked back into her past to accept and rejoice in who she actually is. It becomes a sort of Alice in Wonderland journey.’

Lily discovers the magical aspects of her past, alongside memories of her parents fighting: Lahav’s visual theatre uses contemporary dancers, a ten-foot running machine and Gecko’s unique marriage of movement and set to conjure a spectacle that embodies the serious subject.

‘The notion behind Missing is to do with identity and memory,’ he notes, ‘and how we remember the elements that make us who we are and how we have certain milestones in our childhood that signify who we are.’

Lahav has worked with many great names of physical theatre, but has carved out his own identity as a director with Gecko. Since 2002, he has tackled political issues, materialism and male desire. Missing, which delves into questions surrounding childhood and the importance of memory, demonstrates how spectacular theatre can still have profound depths.